PvP is to test your skills against other people.
Team games really tests how well your team works together. In one random team game i was in today 8/8 of my deaths were because of friendly fire. FFA is more about how well you can dodge all those semi-randomly placed bombs everyone are placing down.
A 1v1 arena would test how good you are not only at dodging bombs but also placing down bombs. It would also be a good way to handle the people that go around calling other people noobs.
Like a "duel" kind of mode vs specific people?
I think they might have not implemented it because they didn't want people getting free kills for ranking points or coins.
But I don't think that reason is very well founded anymore, since people get insane ranking points and coins from losing and being 8th place all the time anyway hahaha.
-----
When I play team games, I won't try to kill my teammates (on purpose, unless we gain a 10+point lead and the other team isn't entertaining anymore), but I won't trust them to not kill me - so treat everyone with equal caution.
Same thing in FFA.
There are a bunch of 'skill' moments that show up in 4+ player matches - for example when you're in a quarter of the map trying to kill the leader - both of you are fighting each other while dodging other peoples' bombs. Sometimes I run into these 1st-3rd place players multiple games in a row and we compete in both trying to get more kills and trying to kill each other. I've befriended some legitimate top 10 players and sometimes people are like "oh god it's you again" when I enter rooms because of moments like that XD
I always try to single out who the next possible threat to taking the lead is and try to suppress them. There's a lot of reading and countermovement that goes on when you're trying to trap them in that kind of setting. In FFA, I'm usually in a room with 1-2 other skilled players and we end up killing everyone else while trying to kill each other.
Close range trap-assassination is where it's at :P
You're trying to kill someone with your own bombs? Good luck.
Note: If one person is running away, and another is chasing and setting bombs, guess who's faster?
The person running.
;)
- If my target is trying to bomb every other row, trying to score points (or we're doing this a few rows away from each other), I will stop dropping bombs in order to try to get ahead and cut him off pre-emptively. Having my target suicide is just as good for me as actually killing that person, because if the target is the leader/2nd place person, then it pushes their score further away from the lead, which is good.
- When the other person is aware you're trying to kill them, the point of using bombs isn't necessarily to try to catch them in it, but to pressure them into a position where you can trap them or just fault and kill themselves while they try to defend against you.
For example, if I get to the point where both of us are hiding in the same square, waiting for a blast to explode, I'll be ready to jump into the first blast that goes off in order to drop a bomb ahead of the person, hopefully cutting them off. People who aren't cautious will try to run that way for about half a second or longer until they realize they're cut off. At that time, I usually try to continue pressuring them until they make a mistake that either lets me trap them in a corner/passage or just fault and run into a blast.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPkHi5xjLLY